


loud for you

by beautifullytragic



Category: Suits (US TV)
Genre: F/M, One Shot, Pre-Canon, Pre-Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-12
Updated: 2021-03-12
Packaged: 2021-03-19 10:09:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,990
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29997786
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beautifullytragic/pseuds/beautifullytragic
Summary: Another late night at the DA's office
Relationships: Donna Paulsen & Harvey Specter, Donna Paulsen/Harvey Specter
Comments: 1
Kudos: 10





	loud for you

**Author's Note:**

  * For [intersectts](https://archiveofourown.org/users/intersectts/gifts).



> The lovely Emma [ ssabbiths/ intersects] kindly asked - nee DEMANDED - a DA office fic and considering today is the anniversary of her birth, here is my offering! Happy happy birthday!

" _Harvey!_ You said you would take this seriously!" she groans, dropping the script she was holding on to the desk with a thud.

"I said I'd read this thing with you to get you to stay late, I never promised you I'd be any good at it," he huffs in return, placing his own script on top of hers.

Leaning back in her chair, she squeezes her eyes shut. "All I've heard from you about how the wonderful Harvey Specter is so excellent at just about everything," she muses, squinting at him, "And I'm beginning to start to think that it's all just talk."

He leans forward from where he was standing, his hands on either side of where her feet are resting on the desk.

"Oh believe me, it isn't all talk."

She hums, raising an eyebrow. "I'm not convinced after that performance."

"Well, that's different," he protests, "I was acting"  
" _Were you?_ Because I'm not sure that's what I'd call it."

He rolls his eyes and tops up their glasses with the scotch he'd stolen from Dennis' office after he left to go home for the evening. Then he had turned on all the charm he could manage to persuade Donna to stay late with him in order to go over a brief needed for the next day that he couldn't possibly look over all by himself, the fact that she had no legal training as always, rendering mute. The only catch today had been that she had a callback in her lunch hour the next day and used it as leverage to stay, only saying she would if he vowed to read the other person's part for her in order to get her lines stuck firmly in her head. Which was proving difficult when it came to it, because for all his bravado and confidence, Harvey was very comfortable being himself. But when it came to becoming someone else, it was something he found made him more self-conscious than he thought it would, leaving his reading of the lines to be somewhat lack of any emotion at all as he felt her eyes on him.

"You have to put some feeling into it, otherwise how can I react to what you're saying?" she muses, sipping her drink and scrunching up her face as the taste she hadn't quite gotten used to yet slips down her throat. "How do you drink this stuff?"

He grins, "It grows on you. Bit like me."

She smiles and leans back in her chair, amused. "You're not growing on anything over here."

He pretends to pout, finishing his drink in one long gulp. Pulling a chair from the desk next to hers, he brings it so he's sat at the edge of her desk. He runs his finger across the pages, "Why do you like it so much?"

She glances down, "Acting? I don't know, it's just something I've always done. You know, my parents put me in my first show when I was four? I was the star in my pre-school's Christmas concert. I reduced every single parent in the audience to tears with my heartfelt rendition of Twinkle-Twinkle."

"I would have expected nothing less," he smiles, "Professional costume or home-made?"

She scoffs, "Professional of course, what do you take me for?" she takes another sip from her glass, coughing slightly, "But it's just been something that's in me. I've wanted to act for as long as I could remember, and I guess growing up when things weren't always so great at home, it was like an escape to me. To get to go to class after school and just become someone completely different, who was not at all like me and didn't have to worry about the stuff I worried about.", she pauses, her voice lowering, "It's so scary sometimes. Wanting something so much that you can't even give a coherent reason as to why you want it, you just do. It feels like everything inside me has wanted it for so long, I cant remember a time when I didn't. I couldn't imagine doing anything else."

He tilts his head to the side, his eyes roaming over her face. She was so different, he thought, from all the other women he knew. It was something he had realised pretty much as soon as she had approached him in that bar all those months ago, but every day since then he had begun to find out who Donna Paulsen actually was, and it was slightly jarring to him how much he liked her. It was the first time he had spent this much time with a woman and hadn't slept with her, though not for a lack of trying on his part. Her rule of not mixing business with pleasure had been initially a source of annoyance for him, but it also intrigued him. He found himself drawn to her, to getting her to stay later at the office so they could drink and talk in a way they never did during the day. It was different when it was just the two of them in the dim office, the only light source coming from the lamps on her desk, really still too dark to properly look over the files they were supposed to be but that didn't really matter.

"No chance of you becoming my personal secretary and following me around forever then?" he grins at her, tapping the bottom of her shoe.

She laughs, throwing her head back against the cushion of the chair, "Please! I could think of a million different things I'd rather do than make copies for you for the rest of my life." But she's smiling. And he's looking at her like out of a million different things there's not one he'd prefer to her doing just that.

She can hear her heart start to beat in her temples and she thinks that he has to be far away enough from her that he can't hear it. She isn't sure why she keeps letting him get his way, somehow always ending up with her sitting with her feet up on this desk and whatever task they were supposed to be doing somehow forgotten. When she had met Harvey Specter and propositioned him for her job, she had spent the first few weeks rolling her eyes and laughing at his futile attempts at getting her to go home with him, reminding him of her rule over and over. But something had ever so slightly changed, and they had started to talk. About stuff that she could tell from how he spoke about it, he hadn't told anyone in a very long time - or maybe ever. She found herself telling him about her life, when he had asked about her childhood – something she usually glossed over with a wave of a hand and a remark about it not all being rainbows and fairy tales – she had found she had told him the truth, and he had listened, and looked at her in a way that made her feel as though she could tell him absolutely everything in the world and he'd keep it safe.

"I should go, I'll need my beauty sleep for tomorrow," she says, swinging her legs off the desk and standing. He rises from his chair too, picking up both abandoned scripts and handing them to her, "Sorry I couldn't be much help."

She shrugs, fastening her coat closed and throwing her scripts in her handbag. "It's okay, we can't all be awesome at everything like I am." Heaving her bag on to her shoulder, she glances at her watch and groans, "If only you were one of those hot shot lawyers, you'd have a lovely car to drive me home in so I wouldn't have to take the subway at this time of night."

"I can always walk you all the way home if you'd like," he laughs, walking with her to the door, knowing there was no way she would ever say yes to it. "What makes you think if I had a car that you would get driven home in it?"

She turns to him as they cross out on to the street, not even pretending to think about a reason, "I would."

The chuckle she hears in return causes her to stop and turn to look at him. She looks at his face illuminated in the streetlight, sirens wailing somewhere streets behind them. She's sure it was just the scotch that she isn't used to yet and nothing else that's making her feel as though she's hearing all the sounds around them as she's listening through a glass on the other side of a wall. His eyes are boring into hers, shining and saying things to her silently that she's way too aware that one day if he was to say them out loud, it might be too hard to resist them. Reaching her fingers out to stop them fidgeting, she leans forward to smooth the lapel of his jacket, even though it wasn't sticking out and he raises his hand to cover hers.

Her hand stills under his and he swears he sees her gasp slightly, her eyes not leaving his. There's a beat where neither of them speak, or move and he's sure they're both holding their breath.

A thought flashes across his brain. He could kiss her. There isn't enough space between them that he would have to lean very far in, and what's surprising to him is how much he wants to. From the very first second they had met, he had found her attractive and had pictured in his mind about how they could be, how he imagined they would fit together but this feeling right in this second, had nothing to do with sex. It was a feeling he didn't think he'd experienced before, the feeling of wanting to just be closer to her, to press his lips against hers and pull her to him, keep her safe. She was looking at him almost expectantly, like she could read his thoughts and he could have sworn she had moved closer than she had been.

He opens his mouth to say something when a taxi whizzes past them, horn blaring and he jumps. His fingers tighten slightly around hers and then he drops his hand at the same second she drops hers, and the moment is over. He shakes his head, and nods towards the way he knows she has to walk, "Walk you to the station?"

She smiles and shakes her head, knowing it's the complete opposite way he has to go, "No, it's okay, Harvey," her voice comes out slightly croaky, all the breath she had been holding forcing its way out of her throat, "it's only at the end of the street. I'll see you tomorrow."

He nods and murmurs a low, "See you tomorrow."

Ducking her head, she turns and starts to walk away, not having to turn back around to know his eyes don't move from her the whole way down the street. Her heart hammering in her chest, she wills herself to keep moving and not to turn back around and walk back to him. This, them, whatever it was – she was beginning to realise it was more than just him being her boss, and she his excellent secretary. There had been a brief moment, when she had thought he was going to kiss her, all thoughts of her rule flying out of her head and she would have let him. This was confusing, her brain was scrambled. Shaking her head slightly, she exhaled, it was late, she was tipsy and she was sure she was imagining things that weren't there.

Only when she gets to the corner does she glance around and he's still there, eyes trained on her, watching, to make sure she gets there safe.


End file.
